Page 15 - Studio International - September 1966

Seghers, and Rembrandt is thus taking a respon- then you make it look like something that nobody What excites you about British art?
sible attitude towards the medium. saw before, if you can think it up. I was enormously impressed by the Paris Biennale
There is certainly no sense of embattlement. Andy which had Philip King, David Hockney and others.
Warhol gets more publicity than any other single, This is a kind of dynamic experiment that you're pro- It was certainly the best national group in that
living American artist right this minute. You can- posing? exhibition. I was enormously enthusiastic about
not even open a fashion section of the Herald Tri- Yes, and boredom. To make it clear-I think that. And then, of course, Moore is undeniable. I
bune without seeing his name at least once a week, that if de Kooning says that, then what he really is don't personally feel very inspired by, say, Barbara
and that's not really being 'underground' at all. interested in is Poussin; that's his way of not being Hepworth.
There's a cinema on Lafayette Street to show those bored with Kandinsky, or by Kandinsky, when
movies; most Hollywood producers don't have as all the world is looking at Kandinsky. That attitude Nevertheless, in American art there's already an achieve-
much-their own showcase in New York. I don't may only work for two years, but that doesn't ment created which is sufficient?
mean that it isn't a good thing, I think it's terrific, matter in the life of the artist as long as it energizes Yes, so that it isn't just a process of 'becoming'. I
but it is not being 'underground'; that's a lot of him to produce more works that are beautiful. don't think American art has to become anything
romantic nonsense. now, it can add to itself-oh yes, apart from the
Are there things which attract you, excite you, in English natural ambitions of anybody who's healthy-but
So you have for the first time a deliberately extremist art art at the moment? there are certain masterpieces of American art, as
Yes. I think there are a lot of injustices going on,
with a ready-made audience? there are of British art and Egyptian art and so on,
4C
Yes. personally. One is that the Pop Art thing in which are already doing their own work. They
America has been almost universally presumed to exist and there they are.
What difference do you think this makes? be American, which it isn't, since if I remember
I think that if you were an Athenian, let's say, correctly as early as about 1952 or 1953 Pop Art as Have you taken part in Happenings?
and you went to the studio and you saw the eyeballs we know it today had already been done in England. No, I never did.
being painted arid the nipples being painted and In addition the British public has made an en-
so on, it would be just as sensational as if you were thusiastic response to the most important American You've been only a witness?
invited to a private showing of Flaming Creatures. artists, more than in America. I think that in many Yes, I did have that. I took part in them in the
It's the same thing because it is part of your cul- cases, certainly in those of Pollock, Rothko, sense that I got that tone with it. If Red Grooms
ture. There's no reason to attack a culture that will Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns (perhaps not decides that he's going to paint his face white, get
allow it to happen and even foster the impulse to Jasper so much because he did have a good res- into some old-fashioned underwear, have a drain
create it. The bourgeoisie has now been so com- ponse here), it was after the London exhibitions dragged across the stage, if a tree is going to fall
pletely absorbed by the rest of society that it can't that Americans snapped to and said, 'Well, we've over in a Jim Dine, if something in an Oldenburg
even have its prejudices any more. really got something here and we'd better start is going to collapse, that is for your fun, and it's
studying it and thinking about it and doing some- supposed to remind you that art is fun and that
So the avant-garde no longer exists in a state of detach- thing about it.' The same thing, of course, hap- we're all children and that it's marvellous. It's
ment or isolation? pened in the reverse sense with Francis Bacon's all they meant by them. It's not existentialist, you
No, the avant-garde has been made up all first show in New York, which absolutely bowled know, or propaganda for any movement.
through history by people who are bored by other everybody over here. He is a magnificent artist,
people's ideas. You don't have to have the Russian certainly, but they weren't at that time even
Revolution or the French Revolution or the Civil paying much attention to Pollock. I think that's
Rights Movement in order to get irritated with one thing that cultures can do mutually back and
other people's ideas. All you have to do is be one forth. Strangers can appreciate the elements which This interview was recorded in New York in October
individual who is tired of looking at something that are too close to you and which you don't really 1965. The introductory paragraph was supplied by
looks like something else; and if you're a painter look at. Edward Lucie-Smith.

Statements by Nusberg intuitive comparison of regular and non-comparable which can be made part of our present. Strange
parts. They admitted freedom inside their system, but constructions stand or hang or move in space and
ln our August issue we published a statement by Lev if we choose a certain system of signs freely (system on the ground, over a huge area. They are similar to
Nusberg, the 29-year-old leader of a group of Moscow equals a state of reciprocal dependence of elements, machines, but they have been created according to
constructionist and kinetic artists working in close col- subordinate in any concrete case to certain rules) we other principles. They are neither statues nor pictures
laboration with architects, and reproduced works exhi- give up freedom inside our system, the freedom of in the presently-understood sense. Our animated
bited at Zagreb and Prague by members of the group. one element towards another. It is more rational to system is closest to architecture. From a distance it
Below we print an edited version of statements by try, by means of absolute regularity (symmetry) to vibrates, changes in appearance and colour, moves
Nusberg on more general topics. The statements, which give a form to all the riches of the human spirit. in space, sometimes almost disappears, only to re-
are dated 1963, were published in the organ of the appear in other colours and shades. The materials:
Czechoslovak Association of Artists recently. The movement of three planes cannot be expressed metal, man-made fibres, glass, beams of light, wires,
in two dimensions. That is why we have to dis- loudspeakers, screens. The construction: a skeleton.
Discontent with the form in which the internal world member them and move into space. But space, too, It moves around its axis, continually changing its
of man has been expressed until now is the main will chain us, will not permit us to fly upwards. We external forms. As if we were looking, in autumn, at a
cause of our quest.... want works of art in which life is given full scope. tree standing in water: it looks different from this
Life-that is movement! side and that, but the construction of the branches
A synthesis of all possibilities! The exploitation of remains unchanged. Not only forms and colours, but
scientific and technological achievements in art-in In nature we see not only reflected colour, but also sounds, too. Kind and friendly ones, and suddenly
spite of the fact that technology cannot make or re- colours which are themselves sources of light. sharp and dissonant impulses. Parts of a system, but
place artI But to improve the technological aspects of These 'light-colours' are the sun, the stars, plasma, with an independent existence of their own. When
the object helps express its content more accurately. gasses, artificial sources of light. We impoverish we approach we are aware of variations in tempera-
ourselves by rejecting these 'light-colours' in painting ture, currents of air, new scents. The music gets
By what means should the content be expressed? and sculpture and reducing the expression of light louder, the construction's organism gradually lights
The alternating rational interdependence of elements to the conditional speech of colour. By means of up, the sounds change. The whole system starts to
or parts of the work has not in the absolute sense 'light-colour' we can express content more exactly revolve around its axis, the speed of rotation increases,
been regular or symmetrical, neither in Mondrian, than by a simple colour. it begins to rise. We take it in with our eyes and
Malevich, or Gabo. They constructed their balance on ears, but above all with our whole body. Yes, with
dissonances, they achieved regularity by means of Let the imagination free! I invite you to the future, our entire body.